Cities need helping hand in battling housing blight

How difficult is it for older communities like Youngstown to address the seemingly intractable problem of vacant and abandoned houses? Recall what occurred last June in City Hall as then Mayor Jay Williams and members of council were getting ready to spend a large portion of a $1,096,328 federal grant on demolition. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had initially placed a 10 percent cap on the grant for demolition projects, but increased it to 66 percent at the urging of the Williams administration.

But the celebration was short-lived when city officials began calculating the cost of a the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule that went into effect at the beginning of 2011. Under it, cities using federal money, including Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds, were required to test for asbestos and clean it up, if it existed, for every structure that was set for demolish.

As a result, the normal cost of between $2,500 and $4,000 for tearing down a house was increased to between $4,000 and $6,000 a unit.

Mayor Williams, who resigned in August to become the so-called auto czar in the Obama administration, called the EPA’s requirement for testing and abating of asbestos “unreasonable” and “an overreach.”

Bottom line: Youngstown was only able to put 140 vacant houses on the demolition list, compared with twice the amount had it not been hamstrung by the U.S. EPA.

“It’s a waste of money,” said Councilwoman Janet Tarpley, D-6th.

Tarpley could well have been expressing the sentiments of officials in all the major cities in Ohio that are involved in the daily battle against housing blight and deteriorating neighborhoods.

With the idea that there is strength in numbers, communities have joined forces to lobby the state and federal governments for new sources of funding to demolish the 70,000-plus vacant and abandoned houses in Ohio, including 4,500 in Youngstown and 2,500 in Warren. Cleveland has the largest number with 14,000.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, the cities aren’t just looking for money. Officials are also hoping that their campaign will result in a relaxing of environmental regulations to reduce barriers to demolition. As for funding, officials are hoping that federal lawmakers will create tax credits to pay for demolitions and will allocate money to pay for the issuance of government bonds to generate revenue.

Statewide issue

The goal, according to the Dispatch, is to make demolition a statewide issue, rather than one that each community must address on its own.

“This is not an urban problem,” Joel Ratner, president and chief executive of Neighborhood Progress Inc., a Cleveland group working to redevelop neighborhoods, told the newspaper. “This is an everyone problem.”

The coalition of cities plans to urge Gov. John Kasich to make the war on blight a top priority for his administration. While Republican Kasich and the Republican controlled General Assembly have had to deal with a challenging state economy — money for local governments was cut in the biennium budget — they cannot be blind to the effects housing blight has on neighborhoods, which ultimately affect the quality of life in the state’s population centers.

The problem must be addressed with a sense of urgency.